Good manufacturing practices and governmental regulations are at the core of any pharmaceutical, biotechnology and bio-medical manufacturing process or procedure. Such manufacturing processes and procedures as well as associated equipment must undergo mandated, often lengthy and costly validation procedures. Similar issues exist for sensors when needed in such systems, such as conductivity sensors.
For example, the equipment used for the separation and purification of biomedical products must, for obvious reasons, meet stringent cleanliness requirements. The cleaning validation of new or re-commissioned purification equipment (including sensor equipment such as equipment for preparative chromatography or tangential flow filtration) may require as many as 50 test-swabs of exposed surfaces and subsequent biological assays of such test-swabs. For a single piece of purification equipment, the associated and reoccurring cost of a single cleaning validation may readily exceed multiple thousands of dollars.
To reduce such cleaning validation costs and expenses, and/or to reduce the occasions when cleaning is needed or required, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries are increasingly employing, pre-sterilized, single-use, plastic tubing and collapsible, plastic bags for solution transfer and storage. Sterilization is accomplished by exposing the complete tube/bag manifold to gamma irradiation, or to an ethylene oxide atmosphere. The pre-sterilized, aseptically packaged tube/bag manifolds are commercially available (currently from TC Tech; HyClone; St Gobain Performance Plastics, for example) and are used for the manual transfer of solutions. Typically, the solution transfer procedure requires a technician to operate a peristaltic pump and to manually open and close tube clamps for diverting the solution from the reservoir to the storage bags. Although this procedure reduces the cleaning efforts and cleaning validation expense, operator interaction and time still are required, and these approaches are dependent upon operator expertise for consistent accuracy and precision.
Dispensing approaches having automated features (which can include sensors, monitors and programmable controllers) are generally known. Keys et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,480,063 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,680,960 describe fluid dispensing units which control fluid volumes in conjunction with a closed loop approach, which these patents suggest can avoid the need for venting. The fluid to be dispensed exits the closed loop apparatus through a fill tube, as directed by a controller. Such approaches do not address the cleaning needs and/or cleaning validation costs and expenses, were these types of systems to be used in pharmaceutical and biotech industries for dispensing, directing, combining or separating biological or chemical fluids.
Prior systems can incorporate diaphragm valves, which come into direct contact with the process solution, and these valves are a potential source of contamination. Thus diaphragm valves require costly cleaning validation procedures. In addition, such systems typically lack suitable sensors, especially conductivity sensors.
It has been found that, by proceeding in accordance with the present invention, significant cost savings and better performance can be realized in a system which incorporates automated, aseptic manifolds and sensors within the field of technology which embraces pre-sterilized, single-use plastic tubing and containers having at least one collapsible portion. The components and sensors which contact the biological or chemical fluid are each presterilized and disposable after use.